a division of the Chersonian Institute
My cousin alerted me to the fact that Cher will be the star of a new comic book before the end of the year. Look for it from Bluewater Productions.
See what their Madonna comic looks like.
You can also peruse hilariously captioned screenshots of Sonny & Cher's early 70s appearance on Scooby Doo here: http://glitterrock.org/scoob01.html
Cher and Sonny running from The Shark God pictured above.
So if you've been reading along over the last six months, you know I've been addicted to the feminist empowerment enacted in drag to be found on RuPaul's Drag U. RuPaul publicized his latest book on the show so I read it, RuPaul's Workin It.
Synopsis review: the first chapter was awesome; the rest was a kind of sketchy thin diary of drag beauty tips.
There were three Cher mentions:
p. 87–Proportion is Everything: "From my collection of pop-culture influences, I added two parts Diana Ross, a pinch of Bugs Bunny, two heaping spoonfuls of Dolly Parton, a dash of Joseph Campbell and three parts Cher. It worked. I worked. You better work!"
[That's most parts Cher isnt' it?]
p. 97–Travels with my Wig: "In the early nineties, Lypsinka told me that Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson had told her that Cher had several kick-drum cases customized to house stationary wig heads for travel. So that's exactly what I did."
[Where do the drums go then?]
p. 98–Hair Proportions: "Cher can wear very long, flat hair because she has a long neck and long torso."
There are no Cher mentions in the book Starstruck, The Business of Celebrity by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. And yet reading it you can't help thinking of Cher's longevity in regard to the tactics the book describes. It's somewhat of a academic and dry read that discusses mostly celebrity for celebrity's sake…people of Paris Hilton's calibre.
The basic idea is that you can ensure your celebrity status by making sure you are seen (and photographed) with other "hot" current celebrities. The book describes people's odd machinations to aquire fame by constructing friendships and publicity events. Perfect evidence of this appeared in December 2010's LA Magazine interview with a personal shopper who said, "One woman asked me to buy her ball gowns with matching shoes, Judith Leiber bags, and jewelry for every night of the week, then hire professional photographers to shoot her wherever she went, like paparazzi."
Who's to say how actively Cher Inc subscribes to this idea of recording and being photographed with the hippest kids of late (Lady Gaga); however, you don't see her doing duets with no hasbeens.
So where have I been? Tethered to my consulting job at ICANN and suffering from my worst carpel tunnel slash upper-back-nerve malfunction of the last year. So I've been unable to paw out Cher diatribes the last two weeks. And now I need to start cleaning the house for my parents' next-week visit. So I'll be MIA for another week after this.
My thoughts and prayers to my Japanese friends and family who have their own friends and family in Japan right now living under the shadow of nuclear meltdown after last week's earthquake and tsunami.
"They say atomic power could never hurt a flower. Holy smoke."
— Cher, 1979, Prisoner album
My Sarah Lawrence College-mate Ann from Scarsdale, New York, sent me this new poem about Cher by poet Dorianne Laux. I love it when my obsessions collide: poetry and Cher. This poem starts out favorable, eulogizing the iconic-looking Cher of the 70s who was as "tall as a glass of iced tea" and gets to wear hokum outfits and has a "throaty panache," a voice of "gravel and clover." But then Laux laments the cosmetic changes of the 80s and 90s.
I like how the poem ends, with an scene that I'm interpreting as an image of Sonny & Cher singing V.A.M.P. on that upright piano.
Cher 
I wanted to be Cher, tall
as a glass of iced tea,
her bony shoulders draped
with a curtain of dark hair
that plunged straight down,
the cut tips brushing
her nonexistent butt.
I wanted to wear a lantern
for a hat, a cabbage, a piñata
and walk in thigh-high boots
with six-inch heels that buttoned
up the back. I wanted her
rouged cheek bones and her
throaty panache, her voice
of gravel and clover, the hokum
of her clothes: black fishnet
and pink pom-poms, fringed bells
and her thin strip of a waist
with the bullet-hole navel.
Cher standing with her skinny arm
slung around Sonny's thick neck,
posing in front of the Eiffel Tower,
The Leaning Tower of Pisa,
The Great Wall of China,
The Crumbling Pyramids, smiling
for the camera with her crooked
teeth, hit-and-miss beauty, the sun
bouncing off the bump on her nose.
Give me back the old Cher,
the gangly, imperfect girl
before the shaving knife
took her, before they shoved
pillows in her tits, injected
the lumpy gel into her lips.
Take me back to the woman
I wanted to be, stalwart
and silly, smart as her lion
tamer's whip, my body a torch
stretched the length of the polished
piano, legs bent at the knee, hair
cascading down over Sonny's blunt
fingers as he pummeled the keys,
singing in a sloppy alto
the oldest, saddest songs.
"Cher" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
Read more poems by Dorianne Laux
To the left is my favorite photo taken of Georgia O'Keefe now on exhibit at the Santa Fe Georgia O'Keefe exhibit "O'Keefiana." It was taken by Yosef Karsh. I love the way her hands are positioned touching the wood, the light coming in through the door, the textures on the wall and (you can barely see it in this copy) but the texture of the dirt on the ground.
Last weekend Mr. Cher Scholar and I celebrated Valentine's Day at the Abiqu Inn in Abiqu, New Mexico (a town famous for where Georgia O'Keefe settled to paint the stunning rock formations of the Chama Valley, the Catholic Penitente Morada there and the Genizaro Indians who settled there). John and I keep returning to the area, first attracted to it by my cousin's camping/cabin/fishing recommendations and our wanting to learn more about the subject of John's employer here, The Georgia O'Keefe Museum. While we were staying at the inn, I picked up a book of poems written about O'Keefe by her friend and sometime-librarian C.S. Merril.
This particular O’Keefe contemplation that seem Cher-related.
63
O’Keefe dressed in black suit
silver flower “OK” Calder pin
white scarf at her neck
hair in french roll at the back
felt like riding to the ranch
to get warm things
velvet hood,
quilted Chinese coat, gloves
kleenexes for watering eyes
talking about a critic
who said she was influenced
by Thoreau and Emerson.
“I’m supposed to have read
Thoreau as a child.
I don’t remember that.
I don’t remember anything
about him.
I have found
When something is written
which is untrue,
it is best
not to comment
because that only
draws attention to it.
Otherwise it disappears
And fewer people
notice it.”
March, 1977
From O’Keefe, Days in a Life by C.S. Merril
So is it irony that Cher now has a bonafide Disney villain inspired after her "look" when all she wanted as a wee tot was to be light and blonde because the only dark-haired girls were Disney villains?
Cher was the inspiration for Disney's latest villain, one of the film's director's has revealed.
Byron Howard looked to one of the biggest icons in the entertainment industry when he was working on new animation Tangled. He says Cher’s exotic look cemented his decision to base Mother Gothel on her. The animated feature tells the classic story of Rapunzel who finds herself trapped in a tower by a wicked witch.
“People keep coming back to this, but it’s true!” Byron told Cover Media. “I guess it’s because Cher is kinda gothic and exotic looking and definitely she was one of the people we looked at visually as far as what gives you a striking character.”
“Donna Murphy also really influenced what Gothel would look like. She was a hard one to crack,” Byron added. “In this version she’s not really a witch or sorceress, she has to be very intelligent, compelling, manipulative character who is very smart and can convince this poor girl she is her mother. So in order to contract her with Rapunzel, who is very petite with blonde hair, we need to go completely in the opposite direction with Gothel.
“She is very all, curvy and voluptuous, and has this very exotic look. We’re trying to say: this is not Razunzel’s mother.”
http://www.musicrooms.net/movies/24902-cher-inspired-disney-villain.html
Hmmm. I see Cher's point.
Went to the Lancaster Pennsylvania for Christmas to see my parents.
Two things happened over my holiday break. First, on New Year's Eve John and I watched the Marx Brothers' movie marathon on TMC (saving Night at the Operafor a few days ago). John loves the Marx Brothers and watching TMC reminded me how fun it would be to see Cher host late night movies there.
Secondly, on the flight to and from Baltimore, I read a book my friend Coolia gave me for Christmas, Cassettes From My Ex, Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves edited by Jason Bitner.
I guess my generation (X) was the unfortunate cassette generation. I never bought cassette albums myself. My older brothers adamantly taught me that vinyl albums had a far superior audio quality. But blank cassettes I bought in mass amounts to do what my cassette generation did best: make mix tapes for ourselves and all our friends. I made a ton of them and received many in return, all of which I have treasured and saved.
And these days there are many books about our tendencies to make these personal eclectic mix tapes. This latest anthology of mix-tape-stories focuses on cassettes we received from our lost lovers and the love stories steal the show, both bittersweet and fond memories of lost teen-age and young-adult love affairs. I enjoyed every one. The mix tapes themselves were 99% alternative, indie and punk mix compilations.
So imagine my surpirse to find Cher represented twice on mix tapes memorialized in the book. "Half Breed" appears on the 1990 mix Vinnie Angel’s received from an old flame. And "A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done" appears on a mix tape Gretchen Phillips received in 1982 from her girlfriend Teresa.
Last week on Ebay, artist Elaine M. Donovan of Dolls By Passion unveiled a truly awesome recreation of Cher on the Prisoner album cover.
It sold for about $300. One of a kind creation…lucky owner.
Catch it while it’s still up: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160487772661
Read info about the artist: http://www.dollsbypassion.com/artist.htm
Wow. Hasn’t it been since like the late 70s since we’ve seen a good Sonny & Cher political cartoon?
(Thank you JeffRey for sending this to me.)
So I spent Easter day in San Diego and I must stay it was both a culturally enriching and perilous experience. Due to my old age and utter glee at being able to afford a short trip, I, many times over, forgot to pay attention to the GET GAS light that was blaring at me all morning. At one point my husband says, “Do we need gas” and I noticed the red and bright dashboard notice. Immediately after that, we passed the big blue inflatable King Kong waving to us from the east side of Highway 5 and I pulled off to the very next off-ramp…which alarmingly turned out to be the La Jolla Parkway! My beloved Bluebell sputtered and chugged out of fuel just as we were trying to make it over the steep Parkway overpass, a quarter of a mile from the gas station.
Thank God, John mentioned gas when he did because just moments and ten yards of pavement sooner, we would have been stuck on a death-defying, shoulder-less stretch of lane-merging Parkway. The nearness of a possible wreck made me start to hyperventilate soon after we pulled over. John called AAA and we got gas within 20 minutes. But in those 20 minutes of waiting I was convinced a speeding, merging SUV would veer off the road and crush the three of us (our furkid Franz was along for the ride), smashing us into a little tin can. I couldn’t help but think of two things: 1) at least I will die with those I have most loved and 2) was I just singing “There But For Fortune” this morning when we passed that wreck on the 405?
But on the bright side…
We saw the lovely San Marcos area, took a hike with ocean views, ate at the scrumptious Los Primos Mexican takeout place in Carlsbad, walked around Old Town (where a new “heritage” cul-de-sac of Victorian houses hovers intimidatingly over the old adobe streets) and Balboa Park, where we marveled over the Easter flowers and international cottages. We took home some BBQ from Kansas City BBQ near the Martin Luther King promenade and the Gaslight Quarter. It wasn’t very good and I almost wished we had instead patronized Jim Croce’s wife’s restaurant Croce’s.
Because I love Jim Croce songs.
We were driving home during the big Earthquake happening just below the border, one that everyone else felt except us (even our friends up in LA felt it). Was it because we were driving? We stopped at a rest area around that time and our furkid went nuts, barking at everyone and sniffing the ground. I thought the stress of being stranded on a highway with half-wit human parents who keep stranding him on highways (if he remembers Christmas day getting stuck between Barstow and Needles with a blown-out tire and a Needles gas station worker telling us angrily “No one will help you today! It’s Christmas!”) and all this highway shoulder time was finally taking its toll on him. But quite possibly, it was his heightened sensitivity to Earthquakes.
I find Cher scholarship everywhere…even when I'm wallowing in high-art subjects like French writers. Listening to a books on tape during my daily commute, I've been enjoying the biography of Marcel Proust by Edmund White.
At one point, he talks about how Proust enjoyed writing “voluntary pastiche” (or impersonations) of famous society types, writers and actors of the day. He called them voluntary because he was willfully impersonating them in order not to “involuntarily” copy them later on in his own works. In other words, he did send-ups of other famous writers to get their iconic styles out of his system.
White states that Proust liked to pick writers like Flaubert and avoided others like Voltaire because their “simple and straightforward style was difficult to parody,” White continues, “just as Drag Queens avoid doing unadorned beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and are inspired by highly-constructed women such as Mae West and Barbra Streisand.”
Interesting way to put it: highly-constructed woman vs. simple and straightforward. It's the best reason I've heard put forward as to why certain celebrities are more easily and wantonly impersonated. If something is organic or direct, there’s no layer of added style to grab on to. And reasonably, it would be hard to do something as inauthentic as the art of impersonation on subjects so intensely authentic.
Give to Caesars what is Caesars.
Last weekend, a friend of mine went to Vegas and stayed at Caesars Palace. One morning, she said, there was no hot water…those Vegas hotels–even the nice ones get a little rickety. And she dropped by the Cher store for me to pick up the new Cher program Vol. 2 which is now available. But she changed her mind when another fan informed her that only 2-4 pages had been added. Allegedly, only the new Mackie costume sketches were put in.
Ahem. "Update" and "Volume 2" are two very different concepts.
Another inhumanity of lazy product reselling! Bah humbug, Cher.
In me news: this was a week of moving my Cher junk out of an office and it reminded me how much I love my Cher posters and Cher fan art. Which made it so timely that Cher scholar Peter sent me a wedding gift of two Cher art pieces. I love them and I’ll try to grab a picture soon as I unpack my camera. They are very kewl!
Here’s what Peter had to say about them:
Of course I did those! I did them in HIGH SCHOOL! All my art projects were based on Cher. The WITH LOVE print was a silk screen – I still have 4 in various colors which I have been meaning to have framed individually for my hall…. I have to say I just LOVED that image of the album cover so much and I thought I TRULY represented Cher….. the STARS is a block print – I still have the original block.
This reminds me that whenever I had to learn something in school–or now–how to search the library periodical books for magazines and news clippings, how to use the Internet, how to use a new online shopping services or databases (like allmusic.com), I always start by searching for Cher things.
Anyway, someday I hope to flesh out my office full of posters as phase one of the Chersonian Institute.
But for now I only have next year. And I’m excited about next year. I’m ready to get some work done, some new pottery, some new writing, I want to turn my old dollhouse into an art piece (I bought it when I was 11 and inspired by Queen Mary's Buckingham Palace dollhouse–pictured above). Hopefully we will have more interesting interviews for Cherscholar.com. I also plan to start the third Cher Zine in January. From Cher we should get a new movie (Drop Out) and hopefully a new album. Who knows what that will turn out to be: oldies, duets, repackaged old albums?
Now that I’m a married lady, I think it’s time I bought a sconce.
© 2026 I Found Some Blog
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑